I became a CIA saboteur by accident

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Hi! I’m Peter, CEO of Kickresume, and these career-related stories caught my attention this month — and might catch yours too.

Do you ever get the feeling that someone at work is deliberately making things more complicated?

Yeah, same.

I recently stumbled onto something hilarious and slightly alarming—a declassified 1944 CIA document, literally called the "Simple Sabotage Field Manual." 

It turns out that during WWII, the Allies distributed this manual to everyday citizens in occupied countries, guiding them on how to sabotage their workplaces discreetly.

As I was scrolling through, I had a weird realization. The CIA's brilliant sabotage tactics sounded suspiciously… familiar?

And that's when it hit me: We might just have a saboteur among us at Kickresume.

By the way, I love talking to you guys, so I’ll be hanging out in the comments on LinkedIn doing a mini AMA — mostly answering questions about workplace sabotage, but happy to talk about other career stuff too. Leave your questions in the comments here: LinkedIn AMA.

This is not a conspiracy theory

So, what is this sabotage manual anyway?

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual was written in 1944 by the Office of Strategic Services (basically the CIA before it was called the CIA). It was declassified in 2008, and yes, it’s very real. 

The whole idea was to distribute it to OSS officers working in foreign countries, so they could train “citizen-saboteurs” in Nazi-occupied Europe to quietly sabotage their workplace — without blowing anything up or doing anything dramatic. Just small, annoying things. 

And let me tell you, some of the advice is chef’s kiss. 

Actually, I’ll just let the manual speak for itself:

A few highlights, in case the typewriter font isn’t doing it for you:

• “When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration."

• “Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.”

• “Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.”

• “Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.”

• “Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.”

• “Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.”

• “Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.”

• “Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.”

It all boils down to one beautiful, frustrating tactic: make everything more complicated and less efficient.

At some point, I stopped laughing.

Because this didn’t just sound familiar — it sounded like me sometimes.

Turns out my management style is... wartime espionage?

See, when we started Kickresume more than a decade ago, it was just a handful of us figuring things out as we went. No processes, no structure, definitely no “alignment meetings.” It was: have an idea → build the thing → see if it works → talk about it over beers. Repeat.

It was messy, fast, and kind of fun.

But then we grew. And at some point, the chaos wasn’t charming anymore. We needed more structure. So, like any slightly overwhelmed founder trying to “grow up” the company, I turned to the people who’d worked in big corporations before.

I asked them what kind of workflows and processes they were used to. And all of the answers had a common denominator: Meetings. Lots of them.

Also: sub-teams, cross-functional task forces, steering groups, pre-meeting prep meetings…you get the idea.

So, I thought, I’ll give it a shot and I took a page from the corporate playbook. 

We started adding more structure. Each team got their own regular meetings. Then we added meetings for projects shared between teams. Then came syncs, check-ins, strategy sessions…Every decision goes through layers of discussion, collaborative hesitation, and a beautifully designed Miro board. 

We built a whole infrastructure to keep things organized and running smoothly.  

But somehow, not gonna lie, it made things slower in the process because it has to go through the whole infrastructure we’ve built to keep everything in check. 

Sure, it’s more organized and we’re able to better avoid worst case scenarios down the road now… but it’s slower nevertheless.

So yeah. If there’s a saboteur in this company, I hate to say it, but it’s probably me. 

I became the exact saboteur this old CIA manual warned us about. 

What the hell?!

When you get played by a playbook

The irony here is incredible.

When you think about it, the corporate playbook is eerily similar to the sabotage manual. The parallels are pretty hard to ignore and that’s just a little too funny to me:

A simple decision requires three rounds of feedback and a cross-departmental sign off. Teams debate wording in shared docs longer than it takes to build the feature. And people spend more time documenting the strategy than executing it.

Okay, I may be exaggerating but you get the idea.

And this is what makes spotting a saboteur inside a big company so tricky — because they look exactly like a model employee.

They’re always in meetings. Always sending updates. Always “circling back.” They talk. A lot. Usually about things that don’t really need to be talked about.

And the funniest thing is, clogging the system somehow makes them look essential to it. They don’t get flagged as saboteurs — they get flagged as “leadership potential” and end up promoted. LOL.

Obviously, they are not planted agents (I hope). But the result is the same.

Just a thought, but maybe that’s also why big companies eventually struggle to keep up with smaller teams or startups—the kind that are naturally more responsive and can react quickly to the market.

Something that rigid corporate structures make nearly impossible.

When CIA gives you lemons, make a (toxic) lemonade!

At this point, it kind of feels like there’s nothing any of us can do to change the corporate playbook. They’re self-sabotaging — and they’re weirdly into it. Little masochists in blazers.

But as for Kickresume? I think we’ll leave those techniques to the big guys. We’ll stick to keeping things simple(ish).

And as for yourself… if you hate your job but can’t quit just yet, you might as well have a little fun. Sabotage responsibly.

Meetings? Double them. Decisions? Revisit them. You get the gist. 

(Obviously, I’m not endorsing you to actually cripple your workplace. But it's kinda funny (and maybe a bit therapeutic) to imagine.)

On the other hand, if you want to be a productive colleague (or a half-decent manager) just do the exact opposite.

Or maybe… I’m just taking management advice from a WWII sabotage manual way too seriously.

But these are weird times. It's hard to say.

I hope you didn't think I'd forget.

Usually this is where I drop a discount code... but this time, I’ve got something different:

We’re running a quick 3-minute survey on impostor syndrome. It’s anonymous, mildly therapeutic, and if you fill it out, you’ll be entered to win a pair of shiny new AirPods 4.

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Thank you and catch you later,

Peter